AT SNAP ! – Not solve Small Farms

SNAP doesn’t support small farmers.

Reinhardt ’18 (Sarah Reinhardt, MPH, RDN, Social Science Policy Analyst at the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. “What the Failed House Farm Bill Got Wrong About SNAP and Work” 06/01/18 ), dani

Addressing some of the major root causes of poverty and food insecurity is no easy task—particularly given the wide variation among rural communities across the country. But using the farm bill to make investments in local economies would be a good place to start. The House bill failed to invest in a number of proposed policies and programs with demonstrated success in supporting farmers, bolstering local and regional food systems, and making nutritious foods more affordable and readily available to communities. These programs include the Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program and Value-Added Producer Grant program, both of which are contained in the bipartisan Local FARMS Act; the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program; the Food and Insecurity Nutrition Incentive Program; and the Healthy Food Financing Initiative. These programs have received broad support from families, farmers, and food producers around the country who know their communities best and see a better way forward.

Majority of SNAP recipients don’t shop at small farms – current incentives fail.

Rachidi ’23 (Angela Rachidi, senior fellow and Rowe Scholar in opportunity and mobility studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “SNAP needs a healthy overhaul” 05/06/23 ), dani

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the country’s largest nutrition assistance program, sending more than 22 million low-income households an average of $490 per month to help them afford healthier diets. Though research shows that SNAP effectively reduces hunger, a more pressing concern has become the quality of food purchased by SNAP households, not the quantity. SNAP lacks nutrition standards, placing essentially no restrictions on the types of foods that households can purchase with benefits. The result? SNAP households use a large share of benefits to purchase unhealthy foods, leading to poor diet quality, disease, and premature deaths among SNAP participants. The problem of obesity and diet-related disease in America has long been a public health crisis — a problem the pandemic only worsened. Alarmingly, 40 percent of adults and 20 percent of children in the U.S. are obese, and low-income groups suffer disproportionately. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity increases the risk of developing severe diseases and health conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke and mental illness, raising the prospect of even worse health among Americans over the long term. America’s obesity problem is bigger than SNAP, but SNAP undoubtedly plays a role. SNAP’s unique status as a strictly food benefit, along with its tremendous reach, means that the program has immense potential to improve nutrition among low-income Americans. By adding nutrition standards, SNAP could alter the dietary habits of low-income households fundamentally, catalyzing improved diets for them, as well as populations higher up the income scale, through an emphasis on good nutrition. However, recent comments by Thomas Vilsack, secretary of the Department of Agriculture (USDA), reflect an unwillingness by the USDA to meet these challenges. The USDA oversees SNAP and, at a recent House Appropriations Committee meeting to review the 2024 USDA budget, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) asked Vilsack directly: “Are there any efforts in the SNAP program to restrict what can be purchased on that program, to allow for, perhaps, educating the American public about what constitutes bad food or good food, like the WIC program does, which you also oversee?” Vilsack responded: “We basically have an education component of SNAP that does just that. We also provide incentives for healthy choices.” Vilsack also said “it is important to understand [that] what we are not trying to do is stigmatize people who are struggling financially,” implying that placing nutrition standards on SNAP purchases somehow would increase stigma. (Notably, obesity stigma is likely a much larger problem than SNAP stigma.) Vilsack said the USDA wants to “trust the consumer” to make good dietary choices. What Vilsack failed to mention, however, is the ineffectiveness of SNAP’s nutrition education program and its healthy incentives. He should know, because he oversaw SNAP as the USDA secretary under President Barack Obama from 2009-2016, before returning to the helm in 2021 under President Biden. Despite Vilsack’s tenure at the USDA, the diet quality of SNAP adults has only worsened during his time there, and the obesity rate among U.S. adults rose from 33.7 percent in 2007-2008 (the year before his original appointment) to 42.4 percent in 2017-2018 (the most recent year of data). According to government reports, SNAP’s nutrition approach has done nothing to change these trends. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2019 that SNAP’s nutrition education program lacked evidence of effectiveness, and an evaluation by the USDA found that the healthy incentive program referenced by Vilsack did not reduce unhealthy food purchases, even though it marginally increased fruit and vegetable purchases.

SNAP money is used on junk food – not small farm produce

Chris Edwards 4/11/2023, top expert on federal and state tax and budget issues and previous senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee, manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and economist with the Tax Foundation. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Waterloo and an MA in economics from George Mason University. He was a member of the Fiscal Future Commission of the National Academy of Sciences., "SNAP: A Nutrition Failure," Cato Institute, https://www.cato.org/blog/snap-nutrition-failure-0

Spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has doubled since 2019 to $127 billion in 2023. Such spending increases are raising federal budget deficits to unsustainable levels. Policymakers need to cut, and one place to start is programs that do not work as promised. With SNAP, the N is for nutrition, but SNAP households have less nutritious diets than other households.

The SNAP page at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says, “SNAP provides nutrition benefits to supplement the food budget of needy families so they can purchase healthy food.” This USDA document promotes, “Increasing SNAP Benefits to Support Healthy Eating Patterns at All Life Stages,” and it mentions “nutrition” 199 times. A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says, “SNAP helped about 42 million low‐income Americans afford a nutritious diet.”

However, SNAP households tend not to “purchase healthy food,” nor do they have “healthy eating patterns” or “nutritious diets.” A 2016 USDA study found that 23 percent of SNAP spending is on what can be called junk food.

More evidence comes from a 2018 USDA study. This chart from the study shows that nutritious foods make up a substantially smaller share of food acquired by SNAP households than other households.

The chart is based on a detailed USDA survey and analysis of Healthy Eating Index components for three groups: SNAP households, non‐SNAP lower‐income households, and non‐SNAP higher‐income households. The income level separating the two non‐SNAP groups is 185 percent of FPG (federal poverty guidelines).

The analysis found that SNAP households receive about the same overall calories as other households, but:

Compared to lower income nonparticipants, SNAP‐participating households acquired 31 percent fewer total vegetables, 40 percent fewer dark green vegetables and beans, 24 percent fewer whole fruits, 20 percent fewer whole grains, and 27 percent fewer seafood and plant proteins for every 1,000 calories acquired. They also acquired almost 6 percent (33.05/31.09) more empty calories as a share of total calories.

SNAP households bought less healthy foods than other lower‐income households. The USDA study concludes, “Compared to the SNAP‐nonparticipating subgroups, SNAP‐participating households purchased foods of lower quality overall.” The study only examined correlations, not causations, but the results are similar to other studies: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data “also show that diet quality among SNAP participants is lower than among nonparticipants.”

Advocates often say that SNAP households have poor diets because they do not have nearby access to healthy foods. But the 2018 USDA results do not support that theory: “Further, on all of our measures of nutritional quality, SNAP‐participating households with low household‐level access to food stores did not differ from SNAP‐participating households with better access.”

Policy Implications

The USDA says that “Poor nutrition is a leading cause of illness in the United States, associated with more than half a million deaths per year.” Yet the USDA’s largest food program, SNAP or food stamps, delivers poor nutrition. This is a major policy failure, especially since SNAP costs taxpayers an enormous $127 billion a year.

SNAP is part of the Farm Bill scheduled to be reauthorized this year, and so policymakers should explore ways to cut the program. One option is to replace the $127 billion program with a “Fruits and Vegetables Program,” which would cost $20 to $30 billion a year (see data note below). Nutritionists disagree about some foods, but they all agree that fruits and vegetables are essential. Taxpayers would save about $100 billion a year replacing SNAP with an F&V program.

SNAP fails – it leads to less nutritious diets

More evidence comes from a 2018 USDA study. This chart from the study shows that nutritious foods make up a substantially smaller share of food acquired by SNAP households than other households.